Visual Representations of the Body in Chinese Medical and Daoist Texts From the Song to the Qing Period (Tenth to Nineteenth Century) (original) (raw)
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Seeing the body: The divergence of ancient Chinese and Western medical illustration
J Biocommun, 2006
A medical illustration is the culmination of centuries of medical philosophy, science, and spirituality. Despite similar beginnings, different circumstances surrounding the development of Chinese and Western medical thought eventually led to their divergence. Through an historical comparison, I will attempt to demonstrate how the East and the West came to have such different views, and thus illustrations, of the human body.
A Survey of Images from the Chinese Medical Classics
Imagining Chinese Medicine, 2018
In 1973, a cache of manuscripts was found in Tomb 3 at the Han-dynasty Mawangdui 馬王堆2 burial site in Changsha (capital of Hunan province). The cache yielded some 30 manuscripts containing 45 texts on a variety of subjects ranging from astronomy and cosmology to ritual and philosophy, and including many maps, diagrams and pictures.3 They were buried in the time of the Han emperor Wendi 漢文帝 (202-157 bce), although some appear to have been copied at an earlier date. Seven manuscripts, all concerned with healing and enhancing the body, are stored in a separate box, indicating that they were considered to belong to a distinct category. Among them is the earliest extant set of images illustrating daoyin 導引, literally 'leading and guiding', a form of therapeutic exercise discussed in several chapters in this volume (Fig. 1).4 This kind of exercise was in some contexts referred to as a form of yangsheng 養生-a term for practices concerned with the cultivation of human life in all its myriad forms, 2 For transcripts see Mawangdui boshu zhengli xiaozu vol. 4, 1985. The tomb was closed in 168 bce. 3 Harper 1998, pp. 14-36. 4 During the excavation process the daoyin chart sustained severe damage, and the illustration in Figure 1 is a reconstruction; Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 1985, vol. 1.
In the course of more than half a millennia of interaction between Chinese medicine 中醫 and biomedicine 西醫, the map and icon of the body as machine has resulted in the hegemonic translation of the TCM body. Looking at the excellent illustrations of 'body parts' which form the first pages of a Chinese translation of Doctor Benjamin Hobson's book Treatise on Midwifery and Diseases of Children 婦嬰新說, published in l840's, and comparing them with the simple stylised line drawings of the 16th century 'body' parts from Chinese classical medical books, one can see the disparity in structural details and inscription techniques. In Donna Haraway's words, it was an 'unequal structuring' of two bodily inscriptions. Like Yee Quock Ping's map and icon a century ago, the TCM body underwent a thorough unilateral translation. The Ming dynasty internal organ body charts gave way to modern books on acupuncture, both Chinese and Western, which 'generally show the chart system of the acu-tracts superimposed upon modern anatomical diagrams. This encapsulates what happened when the premodern Chinese medicine body chart encountered the modern Western biomedical body chart. In this presentation, I will narrate how this came about; present the state of play and the continuing interaction between the two sets of visual representations of the human body.
"In this dissertation, interdisciplinary research demonstrates how Chinese people affiliated with different religions and ideologies of the Song period (960- 1279 CE) utilized artistic, literary and visual representations to merge the natural world with the human body. This fusion of natural and human worlds in representation appears in a variety of contexts, including paintings of famous Song landscape artists, writings of literati thinkers, architectural developments of Neo- Confucian scholars, body charts recorded in the Daoist Canon, and artwork connected to Chinese Buddhism. Traditionally, scholarship within the field of religious studies relies heavily upon textual sources, and material objects are often seen as accessory to the findings related to these sources. When found within the context of religion, art objects are in this same vein often described as representational as opposed to foundational of religious experience or its aspects. This thesis asserts that Song Chinese people used art and other material objects not only for the purpose of representing the world in which they lived, but also as a means of expressing, developing and empowering their religions and ideologies. So powerful were these material representations, in fact, that in certain cases they may have acted as a primary conduit through which the religion was experienced. As the dissertation will show, the interaction between the non-material activity of visualization, or how people create images in their minds, and representation, or how people create material objects to reify the images in their minds, is often pivotal, as opposed to accessory, to some of the later ideological developments of the Chinese people. This thesis also examines sacred space of the Song period, theorizing that an important spatial synergy took place between physical representations and the religions of medieval China: images had become intertwined with how different groups of people visualized their bodies, as well as how these groups represented a human relationship at work with the natural world. In essence, Song representations of mountains, landscape and other natural formations act as material records of how people visualized their own bodies in microcosmic and macrocosmic form."
Hiding in Plain Sight‐ancient Chinese anatomy
The Anatomical Record, 2020
For thousands of years, scientists have studied human anatomy by dissecting bodies. Our knowledge of their findings is limited, however, both by the subsequent loss of many of the oldest texts, and by a tendency toward a Eurocentric perspective in medicine. As a discipline, anatomy tends to be much more familiar with ancient Greek texts than with those from India, China, or Persia. Here, we show that the Mawangdui medical texts, entombed in the Mawangdui burial site in Changsha, China 168 BCE, are the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world. These medical texts both predate and inform the later acupuncture texts which have been the foundation for acupuncture practice in the subsequent two millennia. The skills necessary to interpret them are diverse, requiring the researcher firstly to read the original Chinese, and secondly to perform the anatomical investigations that allow a reviewing of the structures that the texts refer to. Acupuncture meridians are considered to be esoteric in nature, but these texts are clearly descriptions of the physical body. As such, they represent a previously hidden chapter in the history of anatomy, and a new perspective on acupuncture.
Body, texts and things, not necessarily in this order, are basic themes which medical historians encounter every day. However, re-assessing these familiar themes with new concepts, sometimes from other disciplines, can shed light onto overlooked or forgotten aspects of them. For example, there are various things stored in the utility room of medical historydrugs and the materials used to produce them; the medical apparatus; even medical books and manuscripts per se; and the human body. Studies of "material culture" keep our eyes from being blindfolded by the material and symbolic surface, and maintain our focus on exploring the meanings things hold for people. This statement can also be applicable to the concept of "bodily practice", which encourages us not to limit our thinking about the body merely to anatomy or a functional organism, but rather examine the body as a cultural construction and a site for interactive agency. However, for most historians, the medical text is the medium, and sometimes obstacle, to understanding things and the body in the past. How do we determine the meaning of a medical text? Benefitting from philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and literary criticism, we have started to explore how texts and their meanings are related to authors, audiences and contexts. This workshop would like to raise two questions: first, what kind of insights will be sparked off by the encounter of these approaches and the field of Chinese medical history? Second, can we provide a reflective perspective on concepts by negotiating them one to another?
Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology, 2016
Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology 39(2016)1: 56–74 Abstract The medieval Chinese body maps found in the composite text Songs of the Bodily Husk (late tenth century (?)/printed 1445) are analysed as visual source materials and their transmission is followed through several manuscript and print texts. These body maps outline the internal structures of a male torso. Their carefully labelled, impressive details lead up to an overall precise topographical body description. The meditative use of such maps in visualisation exercises is documented for the period of the 11th to 14th century CE. Alteration of the illustrations’ meaning, context and content is discussed. Keywords Body maps – visualisation – Daoism – transmission of visual sources – Medieval China • Part of Curare 39 (2016) 1 The Human Body in Asian Texts and Images Guest Editor: Katharina Sabernig • Order here: http://www.vwb-verlag.com/Katalog/m806.html • Full issue: http://agem.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Curare\_39\_1\_S\_001-005.pdf
The Body Maps of Master Yan Luo
2023
Songs of the Bodily Husk (Ti ke ge 體殼歌) is a composite text attributed to a spurious 10th c. CE figure, Master Yan Luo 煙蘿子 of the Yan 燕 family. He is said to come from the Wangwu region (in today’s northern Henan), known as the author of lost texts on Daoist breathing and meditation techniques, as well as being the creator of the extant body maps under discussion. The work was printed in 1445/1446 CE in the Daoist Canon, fasc. 125, no. 263, juan 18: 1a-10b. In a later version the illustrations are redrawn, and appear with the title Songs of the Bodily Husk of Master Yan Luo (Yan Luo zi Ti ke ge 煙蘿子體殼歌) in Daoist Texts Outside the Canon, vol. 9: 373-378. The source unites twenty-five sections: a rhymed preamble (§1), two poems (§§2-3), six body maps (§§4-9), the Treatise on the Inner Realm by Superintendent Zhu (Zhu ti dian nei jing lun 朱提點內境論), which includes critical comments on the body maps (§10), a meditation manual and instruction called Master Yan Luo’s Guideline on Inner Observation (Yan Luo zi nei guan jing 煙蘿子內觀經) (§11). Short elucidations treat topics of physiological alchemy (nei dan 內丹), the head and brain (§§12-14, 20-24), or give summary treatises on the five storehouses (§§15-19). Talisman illustrations conclude the text (§25). Several kinds of knowledge fields mingle, interact and lead to new questions. The self-cultivation practice called ‘inner observation’ (nèi guān 內觀) had opened a profound and detailed inner world, each adept could relate to in their practice. The body maps are profusely labelled. More than 110 labels enable one to learn a linguistic and visual glossary of technical terms. It thus emerges a thick intertextual network referencing aspects of self-cultivation techniques that help to prescriptively structure one’s bodily awareness. Terms used in medicine only in part overlap with everyday words common for animal and human body parts. Two emic categories classify the body map series: four are of the ‘Maps of Master Yan Luo’ (Yan Luo zi tú 煙蘿子圖) type, two are ‘Five Storehouses Maps’ (wǔ zàng tú 五臟圖). Both kinds of illustrations were used in visualisation exercises in order to guide one’s bodily awareness. Painted on hanging scrolls these images even became lifestyle objects, found in the households of literati and officials. Superintendent Zhu is keenly aware of the clash between field dissection of dead bodies and inner observation of one’s own experiences, as he asks rhetorically: “How can one tell apart the foot jué yīn [channel] being subjected to a disorder—assuming the tongue rolls up and the testicles shrink [this being symptoms of the diseased channel]— compared to the fright of knive and saw [used in dissection]?” Nevertheless, he keenly corrected the drawings, when necessary, and pointed in his Treatise to several controversial points arising in his time. Some problematic points appear marked in black colour on the six charts. The above features make of the body maps in the Songs of the Bodily Husk a unique documentation of human curiosity.